The increasing availability of high bandwidth data networks enables telecommunication service providers to offer their subscribers enhanced communication services. Of these services, messaging is one of the most widely used. For example, in a typical voice messaging service (a.k.a., “voice mail”), when a phone call goes unanswered, the voice messaging service routes the call to a voice response system that records an audio message from the caller and allows the intended receiver to retrieve the message at a later time. In basic implementations, voice messaging systems replicate the features of telephone answering machines, providing a recipient the ability to listen, store and erase messages.
Some telecommunication service providers offer text-messaging services enabling users to transmit written messages and documents over computer networks. Text messaging services include, for example, electronic mail (i.e., e-mail), text messaging, instant messaging and text paging. In a typical e-mail system, a user composes a text-based message at a first network terminal using an e-mail client software application, addresses the message to one or more recipients and transmits the message over the network to a mail server. The server stores the message and, on-demand, routes the message to the addressed recipients over the network. Video mail (i.e., v-mail) operates similarly to e-mail, but also enables video messages to be included within e-mail messages.
Some service providers offer online photograph-sharing services which enable users to upload digital photographs to a database accessible through an Internet website. After a user uploads photographs to the database, another user may access the photographs via a network terminal. Once accessed, the other user may, for example, download copies the photographs to the user's network terminal. Similarly, other service providers offer on-demand video service enabling users at remote terminals to access motion pictures from a central database accessible from an Internet website. The motion pictures may be transmitted to a user as a complete file or they may be “streamed” to the user's terminal in discrete portions that are presented in near real-time.
Still other service providers offer video communication services, such as video conferencing that allow direct, real-time audiovisual communication between participants in the conference. These services generally require the presence off each participant to accept an invitation and participate in the video conference.